Japanese Balloon Bombs: The Fu-Go Campaign

During the Second World War, Japan launched an estimated nine thousand hydrogen-filled balloons from its mainland, sending them east across the Pacific on the jet stream toward North America. They called them Fu-Go. Each balloon carried incendiary and antipersonnel bombs, designed to land and ignite forest fires or cause casualties as far inland as possible.

Hundreds reached North American soil, landing across the western United States and Canada. The Office of Censorship asked the press to hold back coverage to prevent panic and deny Japan confirmation that the campaign was working. Most did little damage. But in May nineteen forty-five, a pastor's wife and five children were killed near Bly, Oregon, when they disturbed an unexploded balloon found in the woods. They remain the only civilians killed by enemy action on the continental United States during the entire war.

This memorial near the Oregon-California border sits in the region where several balloons came to rest. The Fu-Go campaign stands as one of the war's strangest chapters: a weapon that crossed an ocean on the wind.